Networked digital media players maintain a jitter buffer in order to smooth over network irregularities and ensure that their media decoders never starve. With some complex media formats, the media decoders may allocate up to 12 or more seconds of buffered data for some media files in order to guard against starvation. This jitter buffer “preroll” allocation is often set by the content creator as part of the decoding information in the media format. Buffering this quantity of data over the network before commencing playback increases playback latency dramatically and is thus not preferred from a consumer standpoint. Further, when performing a transport control operations, such as a seek command, the latency of the media player is compounded by the preroll allocation as well as the need to process (e.g., play or flush) any data remaining in the jitter buffer.